


parsley seed goes nine times to the devil

by Mook_aron



Series: berries black as midnight, skull as white as snow [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: BAMF Haruno Sakura, Badass Sakura, Everyone Has Issues, Graphic Violence, Haruno Sakura-centric, Mental Health Issues, Naruto needs a hug, Strong Female Characters, Strong Haruno Sakura, Strong team 7, Violence, danzo is a slime ball, eventual poly platonic team 7, grooming kinda?, instability, root sakura, root sakura au, sasuke needs a psychiatrist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-07-29 22:49:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16273973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mook_aron/pseuds/Mook_aron
Summary: Slow to grow, quick to sprout, parsley seed goes nine times to the devilWhen she’s six, a man murders her family.The man is tall, and his features are burned into her mind. She won’t forget him- she won’t let herself forget him.Root Sakura au





	parsley seed goes nine times to the devil

**Author's Note:**

> Well, welcome to my new fic!  
> This is the first of four oneshots, each focusing on a different character in team seven. 
> 
> Once the oneshots are over with, these will coalesce into a multi chaptered story! I hope you enjoy!

Parsley seed goes nine times to the Devil

 

1

When she’s six, a man murders her family. 

 

Mama tells her to hide in the closet, but Sakura never gets the chance. Mama is dead before she even gets to the door and the cackle the darkened figure lets out is chillingly ecstatic.

 

He laughs as she goes slack in his grip, doll green eyes wide and watering. He leaves her for dead, bruises black that circle her neck like a ring of plague roses and she wonders if she’s already gone.

 

The man is tall, and his features are burned into her mind. She won’t forget him- she won’t let herself forget him. 

 

He seems to think she should be dead and, laying on the floor with a sluggish pulse and shortened breath, she certainly won’t—can’t—tell him otherwise. 

 

An elderly man with a cane finds her in the morning, when the bodies of her family have long since cooled and wound tight in deathly stillness.

 

He turns her face from side to side, eyeing the marks on her neck with a keen eye. 

 

His face, once stern, melts into a facade and even at six years old, Sakura can tell that it’s fake. 

 

She doesn’t care. 

 

_ all adults lie. _

 

“Poor child. Let’s get you fixed up.”

 

He helps her collect some clothes and items, all she can take in a small bag. He drops her off at an apartment, rickety and rough—it smells like old rice and decaying paper. 

 

_ “This isn’t my home,”  _ She says in a quiet voice, glancing up at this man.

 

He huffs what she thinks is meant to be a chuckle. “It’s going to be your home now.”

 

She can’t afford to be picky. She’s an orphan after all.

 

The thought chafes and bites and  _ burns  _ in her chest, but she can’t  _ not _ think it. 

 

“Thank you, Shimura-sama.”

 

The one eyed man smiles that tight little smile. “Call me Danzo-sama, Sakura-chan.”

 

2

 

It’s not the last time she encounters the councilman.

She encounters him scarily often. In restaurants where she works part time, in the street and the markets. He always has a kind word for her, sometimes a spare supply of ryo notes (Sakura can’t afford to not take them).

 

She’s eight now, and he sends her books sometimes. Books of the nervous system and the chakra network, the body systems and medical chakra—books on poisons and antidotes and how to seamlessly handle both. 

 

He hands them to her with great care, a single eye trained to her two and the weight of his expectation is like a boulder above her. She studies diligently—she’s unsure of what happens if she fails to learn quick enough. 

 

It begins rather slowly. He gives out praise sparingly—but if she fails to learn something when he next asks her, he doesn’t tell her to keep trying. He huffs and leaves, his demeanour agitated and annoyed.

 

He’ll visit, to see if she’s learned and she’ll scrabble to learn as much as she can before he does, somehow attached to this mean old man and his grumpy, haughty manner. 

 

She’ll learn, years from now, that this is a form of abuse, of coercion.

 

Eight year old Sakura doesn’t want to lose the only person who seems to give a fuck.

 

(And she can’t afford not to have that little bit of extra money. She buys food with that. She can’t afford it otherwise.)

 

So when he watches her practice throwing senbon until she’s exhausted, hands shaking and fumbling at the sharp needles and she curses like a sailor as one stabs into her palm. She has to get this right. 

 

She doesn’t even know why, but she  _ needs _ to get this right. 

 

It’s 3am. She’s been out here since 7pm with Shimura-sama. She has to go the classes at the Academy in 3 hours. From the way the elderly man is pursing his lips, she knows she won’t be allowed to stop.

 

And when had it become ‘allowed’?

 

The child doesn’t care, she just trudges over to pick up the remaining senbon and resumes her position.

 

“ _ Brain, liver, kidneys, heart…” _

 

Deadly, deadly, deadly,  _ missed _

 

There’s a shuffle behind her, a shifting of weight onto a cane and she knows that she’s messed up again. 

 

“Again.”

 

She complies. 

 

_ Deadly, deadly, deadly, deadly _

 

The last senbon lands with a soft noise and she turns with a small smile, face open and waiting. And he doesn’t disappoint.

 

“Adequate, Sakura-chan.”

 

It makes something in her chest loosen and she bows happily. “Thank you, Danzo-sama!”

 

“Again.”

 

She feels like a doll, a mannequin as he adjusts her arms and legs, tweaks her position until it is perfect and demands that it never be less than perfect. The position hurts, strains her back and legs. 

 

She doesn’t drop it, even when her legs start shaking.

 

He said it was good. That’s more than enough reason to keep trying. 

 

One day it’ll be good enough, she just knows it.

 

_ all adults lie. _

 

3

 

On a day where she thinks  _ (just maybe)  _ that she might be good enough—Danzo-sama had patted her gently on the head that evening and told her she’d done well. It was her birthday, the ninth she’d had and though she missed a single pink cupcake and decorations and silly party hats with her Dad, a single sign of affection was enough for her.

 

That’s the night she wakes up with a cloth over her mouth and half a startled breath before her eyes close once again. 

 

And she wakes again with a hitched breath and rolls out of a unfamiliar cot onto an unfamiliar floor. There are no windows. There are no doors.  The room is white, eye searingly  _ white _ and it takes her a few moments to be look past the glare. 

 

Her mentor sits in the corner, eyes watching her but with no trace of that warm regard. They were flat and dark, almost beady in the light. He looks like he did, that night three years ago before he melted into something she could rely on. 

 

“You’re here because I ordered it. I don’t give my regard lightly and you’ll earn off your debts to me in a less… conventional manner.”

 

She goes to protest, to ask what’s going on and why she can’t see a door and why is she  _ here- _

 

And she can’t speak, she can’t bring a syllable out of her mouth and instantly her anxiety levels sky rocket. There’s a coil of chakra at the back of her throat, sitting like a lead weight and it burns as she goes to speak.

 

There’s a flicker of something like regret across Danzo’s face. It’s chased by something far more sinister and it sends chills down her spine. She’s scared, terrified out of her wits but she’s learned to rely on this man, on his advice and comfort and regard. 

 

She’s torn between demanding what’s going on and heeding his wishes. He wants her here.

 

_ Isn’t that good enough? _

 

There’s a dry chuckle, and the sound of cloth ruffling as the elderly councilman stands. 

 

“You’ve no choice in this one. I’ve picked you personally, and put a lot of effort into you- you won’t let me down. Will you?”

 

When he puts it like that, she hardly has any choice in the matter.

 

Unable to voice her reluctant agreement, she merely nods. 

 

Danzo melts through the wall on one side and disappears from view. 

 

Far above this tiny box of lights and metal furniture and white walls, the sleepy streets of civilian Konohagakure stir to life and the world moves on, as life like a wagon wheel decrepit with age, creaks slowly onward. 

 

Sakura won’t see those streets for over two years. And by the time she does, she’ll hate the smell of deception. 

 

_ because don’t you know _

 

_ all adults lie _

 

4

 

Sakura is not even ten.

 

Her kill count is in the triple digits. She’s not really sure how many now—she can’t view her file and the trainers are blank faced and silent to anything other than Danzo’s orders.

 

But not  _ all _ of the trainees are as far along as they seem. She meets a boy with hair the color of ash and eyes that  _ sparkle. _ He whispers jokes to the other kids in the room—a number that dwindles as time passes until there’s only three of them there.

 

( _ and he burns and burns and he hacks up blood as dark as midnight and his hair fades the blue-grey hue of mountain oak ash) _

 

They don’t have code names yet but the two boys whisper their names to her between training sessions, a name that means death and a name that means talent. 

 

She whispers back that her name means a flower and they grin, young faces pale in the dark and somehow, hope sits below her chest and blossoms into  _ something _ .

 

But happiness—

 

_ Sakura knows this, knows that it’s foolish and suicidal and wrong and it’s going to hurt dammit _

 

—is an illusion and not one she can easily afford to be lost in.

 

When Danzo hands her a Tanto and tells her to kill one of her bunk mates—Sakura takes it. 

 

The blade is familiar in her hands—it’s not her tanto but she’s seen it often enough in skilled hands. This is Shin’s tanto- she knows it. It’s worn on the leather wrappings, just where his pinky finger sits—Shin has a protruding bone that sits there, broken from training and ill healed. She knows it rubs awkwardly on the skin, forms a heavy callous that inhibits his weapon skills and she’s watched him shave it away with a soft pumice stone every week for a year.

 

She’s still holding it when she staggers into their room and it’s drawn, sharp and she  _ knows that Shin knows and Sai doesn’t know yet and he can’t hear the rot in half formed lungs—  _

 

“I have orders. I-”

 

Bile boils in her gut and reaches towards the light of the room and she forces it down through sheer will and it burns, roils and writhes like a live wire.

 

“I’ve been instructed to use my discretion to limit the occupancy of Dorm #256, containing cadets 235, 986 and 562.”

 

Sai’s eyes are wide and Shin’s are closed, tucked further back into a sunken face and he’s in a starvation section of training and no child should die  _ hungrydeterminedresigned  _ but Sai doesn’t know that yet. 

  
  


“Sai-”

 

The boy has talent written in his name shakes his head, denies his brother those last words and turns away. He won’t watch this, he  _ cantwatchthis _ —he caves half a second later, curls thin arms around a thinner torso and ribs are visible and he wants something he doesn’t know how to name anymore but he wants it more than anything.

 

Sakura knows the word.

 

Sai wants  _ freedom _ and family and he wants to breathe above the mould of leaf clutter down among their home of dirt and rot-bound roots.

 

Sakura wants to blame herself for this but— 

 

Makes herself remember that the man who feeds them is the one who hurts them and the same one who demands that they bleed for the weak, the  _ meat _ who have never done anything for them—he is the one who cares nothing for them.   
  
_ For the village _ , Danzo whispers like a fanatic, the gleam of a madman caught in the moon daze fracturing along his irises.   
  
‘ _ For me’ _ Danzo's words echo, she thinks. 

 

Shin’s flesh yields beneath carefully honed steel and he dies with that bloody smile on his lips, a crooked slant and his eyes are empty.

 

For his lungs were greedy and Danzo had decided he had taken too much.

 

Avarice is a bloody, twisted thing.

 

_ don’t you know child _

 

_ all adults lie _

  
  


5.

  
  


Sakura sees herself in a mirror for the first time in 4 years.

 

It’s a huge let down.

 

Very little of her has changed—she has more muscle mass, a few more scars visible and many more that are not. They’ve tucked her into an outfit so familiar it’s alien and as she stands in Haruno red, traces an uneven white circle across the back, she sees her father in the reflective surface and a glimmer of fury lights in her heart.

 

The will of fire was a thing of simmering heat, an inferno that wove itself into the bones of Konoha’s people and scorched doctrine into their hearts.  _ And like all infernos, it consumed. _ A village of mortals who bent flame to their will, who sacrificed their young to a death of flame and ash. They devoured their children, pouring ashes on to the ground and declaring it as honour. 

 

She doesn’t love this village, doesn’t want it to flourish or see its people prosper. She wants to watch it burn, as easily as one sets alight the gossamer wings of a butterfly, watching as it spirals in a morbid dance of fiery torment. She wants to turn back upon them the fire they claim protects them— the flame in the hearts of children barely old enough to pronounce the words, young tongues that stutter and stilt across the longer words. 

 

Pretty words do nothing to dull the blood stained leather on her— _ his _ tanto.

 

Sakura had almost forgotten what she looked like, cast aside memories of how her forehead was oversized and her skin too dark, of how her hair was too bright and teeth too white against darker skin and how someone had once muttered that her skin would leave dirt behind—and how no one would play with the child no one talked to.

 

Mama would’ve said the Haruno red matched her strength of her blood, and Papa would’ve told her that her skin was the colour of life and fertile earth and all things that grow.

 

But Sakura looks in a mirror, in a barely-touched apartment that is now ‘hers’, and stares at the flat expanse of her forehead, the shape of her nose and the shade of her lips, traces with an echo of intimacy the smooth edges of scars she has never seen. Lingers on the edges of a roughened scar that puckers at the edges, an expanse of skin paler than the surrounding patches, stretching down her left arm and sketches faded memories of steel across her arms.

 

Danzo has instructed her to avoid undue notice or suspicion.

 

She can play the civilian-born among a team of genin, but she won’t fool a jounin.

 

But she needs to.

 

She smiles into the mirror and assembles something she knows looks wrong, the posture too straight and the angle of her shoulders too uniform. She practices slouching a little bit, winds the tendrils of a lazy slough and a meandering, childlike innocence into the fabric of her persona and hopes that it will stick. 

 

If she plays the part of a callow child, with no experience and wide eyes, she might just fool him. And if she can fool him, she can fool anyone.

 

_ Because don’t you know _

 

_ All you can do is lie _

  
  


Team 7 is never going to last.

 

Teams with the denomination ‘7’ never did—it was written in the history books and recorded in the annals, a testament to the mistakes of each generation and how the system no longer worked, as it produced children who clutched at their parent’s hands scant years before and who now clutch kunai and snatch onto their sanity like bitter, writhing fingers through fog.  Their sensei is just the last in a long standing list of those who survived team seven, for better or worse.

 

Sasuke is a shell of child and there is something vicious and terrifying that lurks behind cold eyes, a gaze that glances over her and it is as if he is looking at dolls in a cabinet, or actors on a stage. So detached and yet unhinged, that she is hardly surprised when he attacks her in a fit when he meets her on the rooftop of the academy.

 

Less than surprised—she expects it from most people now and it is almost gratifying to be proven right, as dearly as she would wish to be wrong occasionally. 

 

The dark-eyed rabid creature that dwells inside the genin’s mind takes one glance at her face and snaps, teeth lunging out as kunai and she meets it with relish. She doesn’t know when the song and rasp of steel on steel and grating on plated armour became a melody, a pattern for her mind to follow on instinct but she can’t temper her reactions. He solidly lodges a kunai in between her ulna and radius, his eyes wide and she can tell he didn’t mean to hurt  _ her _ but something that hovers in her periphery—he stands in shock as a blur of movement divests him of his weapons.

 

Sakura inspects the wound on her forearm, eyes the kunai sticking out of her skin with clinical detachment and notes how much blood is present at the site. There’s relatively little visible—but that doesn’t mean too much when a weapon is currently lodged in the wound itself.

 

She doesn’t pay much attention to the kerfuffle behind as she binds a tourniquet around her upper arm and pulls it reasonably tight. She grits her teeth and pulls the dagger out of her forearm, muffles the brief sound of pain—

 

_ “Sakura-chan, you should be quiet for this section of your training. You wouldn’t want Danzō to think his investment was wasted, would you now?” _

 

_ The glow of pale hair is eerie in the circle of medical spotlights and a scalpel hits her skin—she cannot figure out the answer quick enough and she cries out, fitful and agonised. “Steel!” _

 

_ A voice tuts behind her head and the sound rings like a bell. _

 

_ “Wrong answer, Sakura-chan…” _

 

—She bites the sound down, swallows the pain and assesses the damage. The metal chipped a bone, on the interior face of her radius and nicked quite a few arteries and veins on the way, stopping short of breaking the skin of the opposite side. It’s almost a boon that the genin takes good care of his weapons—a blunt weapon would’ve far more tedious damage.

 

With a quick and sharp breath, Sakura brings a glowing green hand to her arm and begins to knit together the tattered edges of arteries and bind the bleeding frames of veins back into place. Each surge of her muted chakra encourages bone to accelerate its healing process, pushes cells to duplicate and multiply. She urges her blood cells into efficiency and stitches up what her chakra cannot afford to. 

 

When she glances up, three pairs of eyes watch her and she knows she’s probably fucked up big time. 

 

But Hatake Kakashi’s eyes are not suspicious—they are understanding and she isn’t quite sure what the better of the two options is. 

 

There’s a pair of blue _ (empty empty empty empty) _ eyes that watch her in horror, gaze darting between her bloodied arms and the dry-heaving Uchiha boy crouched on all floors, the swill-brine smell of vomit lingering on the still rooftop. 

 

His eyes move feverishly—the jerky, uncertain movements of a child caught in a night terror and unable to flee, his stare latching onto small movements and holding fast. She notes it down in the back of her mind, wants to know why his eyes are vacuous and she knows Danzo will want to know. He wants to know everything he said, wants every moment recorded and dredged up from the rootbound mess of a sun blinded mind.

 

_ Sakura already likes the sun, hadn’t realised how much she missed the warmth of midsummer heat on her skin and the way her skin lit up red-brown-gold under its rays.  _

 

_ Sakura doesn’t  _ want  _ to go back. _

 

It’s a fiasco of a meeting, one that shakes something loose inside her chest and her wrist  _ aches,  _ she wasn’t able to coax the skin to knit correctly but that might’ve been for the best. She’s trying to avoid undue drama and suspicion, but she’s already messed that up. Sai would have a conniption laughing at how badly she’d fucked up the first 3 hours of her long term assignment.

 

Sai, who was halfway across the landmass, embroiled in a whorehouse and Sakura  _ can’t think of that. _

 

She’s saved from her own inner monologue by Hatake-san clapping with far too much cheer, mask stretched over what she assumes is a wide grin. She thinks it’s meant to be patronising—it comes across as afraid.

 

“Well, that’s as good an introduction session as I could’ve hoped for. We’ll meet at training ground 7, near the red bridge. Don’t eat breakfast, because you three need to pass it with flying colours if you want to be genin.”

 

  
  


Twenty minutes later and a whirlwind of chakra assisted transport via Kakashi sees Sakura in the hospital, the lingering aches of a chakra healing fading from where an on duty medic had tutted at her half-baked healing attempt and a quick wap over the ears that still smarts a little. It’s by no means the worst pain she’s ever known— but medics know which spots smart the most. Mama always knew— Sakura cuts the thought off before it forms fully.

 

She’s been down that path far too many times.

  
  


The Uchiha and Hatake-san have long since vanished— Sakura can’t say she’s sorry to see the dark haired boy out of her sight. The adrenaline has worn off, the soft shakes belying the last vestiges of shock in her system. Sakura doesn’t relish in pain— she can withstand but it still  _ aches _ .

 

And she’s afraid, in some untouched corner of her mind grown wild with disuse that wakes from it’s frigid slumber. Something yawns and sketches, catlike and sluggish in the empty catacombs of her mind, curls around her heart like nightshade and murmurs  _ ‘mine’ _ .

 

She buys food from the local market— she avoids the Haruno stalls like the plague, knowing that they’ve likely been looking for her and she can hardly fly under the radar when she flies a larger banner that says ‘I’ve been missing for 4 years and my parents were brutally murdered’ above her head. Because that would go down so smoothly, and nobody would bat an eyelid.

 

Sasuke is there for the team meeting the next morning— he’s still wearing the same outfit as yesterday, the unmistakable stain of blood edging the sleeve.    
  
She doesn’t ask what happened after they left her at the hospital, doesn’t comment on the dark circles under his eyes and the sallow tint of his skin that spoke of a night without rest and harsh lighting.   
  
She smiles to greet him, curves her eyes shut and remembers how Shin looked when he smiled.   
  
The dark haired boy shudders and turns away.    
  
The blonde boy,  _ jinchuuriki _ , gazes emptily at the sky and takes no notice of her hushed morning greeting, lost in a daydream. His eyes have stolen the clouds from the spring sky, hazy and shrouded.   
  
She gazes into the stream and sees Shin smiling back at her. 

 

_ look around you child _

 

_ your heart lies _

7

  
  


Sakura wasn’t a genin. In all truth, she’d never taken the entrance exam or attended the academy. She hadn’t been raised or trained as a successor or apprentice to some clan head— Danzo made it blatantly obvious that showing any reaction to him in public was worse than a death sentence and she could hardly claim his teachings as reasons for her skill. She has a fake registration card, that will bypass the normal checks— but if someone drags her to Ibiki, nothing will stand up to scrutiny.

 

So when Kakashi pins her with a flat stare disguised by a cheery smile, which sits so tight across his fake she wonders if he thinks her blind, Sakura knows she has to think of a reason before she finds herself in hot water. 

 

“Sa, Sakura-chan— you have a good handle on medical chakra for an academy student. Where’d you learn that?” She smiles sweetly, the curve of a saccharine line across her face and takes a breath before answering.

 

_ don’t you know child _

 

_ everyone lies _

 

“My neighbour is Sakato-san, from the shinobi hospital sector! He lives in the unit next to me, and teaches me medical chakra. He lends me books on medical chakra and the body systems, and how to heal minor wounds,” She took a breath, lowering her voice a little and glancing down at the ground. “A-and he makes me dinner sometimes because I think he worries that I live alone, and he needs the company too.”

 

She keeps her gaze aimed at the ground and to the left of where she can see Kakashi standing. His left sandal has a tear on the underside, disturbing its tread pattern. If it left a mark, it would be distinctive and easier to track— she wonders whether the wear on the shoe is intentional. He may look like an air-headed man— but his gaze spoke volumes of how much information he took every moment that passed.

 

She flicks her gaze up faux-hesitantly, to see him regarding her with an inscrutable expression that flickers into a lukewarm grin and a disinterested hum that flows into a far more sincere devious smirk as he produces a pair of bells and an alarm clock before them.

  
  


Two hours later, Sakura gazes over the semi-destroyed training ground with weary eyes— she knows that their first d-rank is going to be cleaning up the field if they pass and she isn’t looking forward to it at all. A glance to the side reveals her blonde teammate bound to a pole and a blank faced Uchiha leaning against a nearby tree, holding an unopened bento in his hands. There’s not much in the small lunches— just shoyu seasoned rice and fried eggplant for a topping. 

 

“Uhhh… I’m so hungry…” Sakura can hear the jinchuuriki’s stomach rumbling from here, and she knows he has barely enough energy to be useful the next test. They barely got close to the slippery jounin when they were full of energy and uninjured— so being drained and sluggish from hunger would do them no favours.

 

Sakura _ needs  _ this team to form. 

 

Danzo doesn’t accept failure and she’s seen what happens to those who do, knows that a sharpened tanto slides through muscles and through the spine like a hot knife through butter.

 

So she taps her blonde teammate and when bright blue eyes swing to meet her gaze with something like relief, she almost thinks she is staring at another person. But aside from the light of clarity in his eyes, Naruto’s appearance is entirely normal. His chakra signature is unwavering and as blindingly bright as it was when she first met him.

 

“Eh? What is it Sakura-chan?” She withholds her flinch at the diminutive, instead just raising a piece of eggplant to the tanned boy’s lips. He stares at the food hungrily, practically salivating at the smell. ‘ _ Must’ve actually followed Hatake-sensei’s instructions. What an idiot.’ _

 

The thought is almost fond and Sakura shakes herself mentally, berating herself for losing sight of her mission so soon. “Eat it. If you don’t eat something, then you’ll be useless in the next test. A small amount of food is better than nothing and you’ll need it to replenish your energy.”

 

She smiles, eyes curving closed as she does and she misses the way that Naruto’s face pales at the expression, too distracted by the resulting cacophony that erupts when Naruto hurriedly swallows the eggplant, practically unchewed in his haste to alleviate his hunger.

 

“You…”

 

For a very real moment, Sakura thought she’d failed. 

  
  


_ She had failed and Sai was stuck in Iwa, in some whorehouse and shehadtomakesurehecame h o m e _

 

And after an eternity split into a second, the silver-haired jounin grinned with panache and spread his hands out wide. “..pass.”

  
  


Sakura almost draws steel on him and she’s not the only one. 

 

8.

It’s only been a month, but progress is progress. 

  
  


There’s a lighthearted moment, bound up in surprised victory and the adrenaline high of success, where they sit side by side and laugh. Naruto’s laugh is like a drum, loud and vibrant, it launches out in a staccato rhythm of mirth. 

 

Sasuke chuckles, below his breath when he thinks they cannot hear him and his voice catches roughly only the edges of a rare joyful sound. She can hear Kakashi let out a huff, that would sound deriding at face value, somewhere in the trees around them. 

 

Sakura leans back against a tree trunk, entrances by the patterns of chakra through the trees behind her and the chakra-charged eddies of wind that blow past. She laughs, a soft sound that passes behind her barriers and she gets caught in the freedom of a forbidden thing, lets herself laugh until she cries and Naruto howls in laughter, sides aching and tears pouring at the corners of their eyes. 

 

Sasuke watches them with an inscrutable look but a smile on his lips.

 

Sakura counts it as win.

  
  
  


As the sun reaches its zenith in the sky, Sakura can see the tip of a falcon’s wing glide over the ridge and she pulls herself together with a small amount of difficulty. 

“Well, I guess I’ll see you two tomorrow!”

 

She pats the blonde on the shoulders, which are still shaking with soft tremors of laughter and smiles.

  
  


She doesn’t touch Sasuke, instead waves and departs.

  
  
  


Danzo isn’t pleased at how little information she has gained for the risks she has taken. He sits, fingers steepled and elbows balanced on the desk in front of him. 

 

“986, your actions have been foolish and ill advised. I warned you to take this mission with the utmost seriousness, and yet already you raise issues with your identity and that Hatake brat has latched his suspicions onto you. Can you justify these actions?”

 

Kneeling on the ground, head to her knee, she has no information to go off aside from his monotone voice and she steels herself— All answers are wrong and nothing will stop his dissatisfaction with her performance.

 

“I have, through my actions, successfully created a tense camaraderie between my teammates and I. I believe my actions, while hasty, will be to the benefit of the mission, Danzo-sama.”

 

A tapping noise emanates from behind the desk, a slowly cadence that builds not in volume but gravity, each thump enticing her heart to match. “Your negligence will affect your partner’s mission, as we discussed. Sai will receive his mission handler only once this month, due to your actions in this sensitive mission. See that it doesn’t not become a repeat performance— I would hate to lose my best tracker to some whorehouse in Iwa. Dismissed, 986.”

 

She doesn’t recall leaving the office, nor the half hour block of time it took her to teach her unit, on the entirely opposite side of the village but she makes it there, with all her coin and her hands remain clean. 

She glances around the unit that has become a safe haven, to the sketchbook on the counter and the team photo on her tv stand. 

 

_ Your actions  _

 

_ Y o u r  a c t i o n s _

  
  


She glances down, to the faint scars on her hand that trail like nail marks up her arms, trying to recall when she landed on her futon, still unmade and messy from her morning time rush. Sai’s frantic movements, so long ago, prying her stony hands from the handle of a blade that would never be hers, the haste of rage and panic drawing wounds across her dark skin.

 

She thinks of Sai.

 

_ Remember child _

 

_ You don’t have to lie _

 

9.

 

When she knocks on Kakashi’s door at 3am, she doesn’t expect him to answer. 

 

He pulls the door open after her first rap on the mildew weakened frame, in half gear and signature mask still wrapped around his lower face. His countenance is tired and wan, clearly demanding a good reason for her presence at his door, at some ungodly hour.

 

She promptly opens her mouth and sticks out her tongue as far as she can, exposing the bitter-dry ink of shackles to the light of Kakashi’s hallway lamp.

 

She sees three shades of colour fade from an already wan face and inside, the demon howls in triumph.

 

_ don’t you know child _

 

_ your lies are your weapons  _

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
